Aisha Harris travels to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee to watch Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede – twice. (Audience members choose whether to sit with the North or the South; she wanted to see the show from, as it were, both sides.)
Category: theatre
Broadway’s Social Media Problem
“Actors’ Equity has contracts with the Broadway League and various producers that constrict what can be recorded; these also make it clear who owns the footage, and it’s not the actors. They can retweet or share something posted by the show or a news outlet, but they typically can’t just go on their own for self-promotion purposes. In recent years, because of the growing importance of social media, actors have been grumbling that they need footage rights.”
Is Theatre An Ideal Space To Get An ‘Empathy Workout’?
Yes. Theatre is, to put it bluntly, special (and science backs that up). “There is something about theatre in particular that transforms the way we consider humanity. After surviving millennia, it remains one of the most popular and desirable modes of storytelling. Beyond entertainment, there is something we gain at the neural level by engaging with theatre.”
Is A Theatre MFA Worth Anything At All?
People are going into debt up to $130,000, and Harvard’s ART is shutting down its MFA program for three years to re-evaluate before it gets shut down. “While a theatre education is valuable, it ought to be cheaper. In an industry currently in the throes of an ongoing conversation about equity, diversity, and inclusion, lowering the cost of education is one way to attract individuals from more socioeconomic backgrounds. Otherwise, according to O’Malley, ‘What’s going to happen is the only people who end up with MFAs are going to be rich kids.'”
Netflix, But For Live Theatre
Pay $20 a month, and get unlimited access to any offerings from a theatre? Um, OK. And if you
liked a play, you could see it more than once. (Maybe.) “Unlike a yearly subscription, which includes one showing of each play, a B-Flex pass could be used unlimited times – the incentive being that it gains value the more it’s used. B-Flex members do not have guaranteed seats, so its use would be contingent on availability.”
The Blossoming Of ‘Documentary Theatre (Just Don’t Call It That)
Amelia Parenteau: “Of the seven contemporary theatremakers I spoke to for this piece, not one was happy with the term ‘documentary theatre’ to describe their work. … And yet each of these artists is undeniably engaged in creating some kind of documentary theatre, meaning that they draw from factual source material to craft their work and tell engaging stories in direct conversation with our present reality. Above and beyond holding a mirror up to society, as all art is charged to do, these theatremakers are finding ties to specific communities and stories, proving the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction.”
Four Leading ‘Documentary Theatre’ Artists Talk About How It’s Done And How It’s Changed
Steve Cosson of The Civilians (This Beautiful City and The Great Immensity), The Laramie Project head writer Leigh Fondakowski, KJ Sanchez of American Records (ReEntry and X’s and O’s (A Football Love Story)), and veteran Ping Chong join Amelia Parenteau for a roundtable.
Anna Deaveare Smith On Race In American Theatre (And In America)
In this speech, delivered at last year’s Theatre Communications Groups national conference, the pioneer of verbatim theatre recounts the time she moderated an onstage debate between August Wilson and Robert Brustein (which organizers had wanted to turn into a verbal boxing match), performs excerpts from her Notes From the Field: Doing Time in Education (about the “school-to-prison pipeline”), and channels Margaret Mead and James Baldwin.
A Musical Plays For Thousands, Deep In The Dakota Badlands
Laura Collins-Hughes travels to western North Dakota to see The Medora Musical, “a spangled summertime revue performed in an amphitheater carved into the side of a butte, with the Badlands as its backdrop. Part country music jamboree, part variety show, it’s a wholesome cousin to the loosely scripted entertainment you find at theme parks … The crowds have been coming since 1965, and when this season wraps up on Sept. 9, the producers expect attendance for 2017 to have passed 116,000.”
Movie Stars Who Came To Grief On Broadway
Alexis Soloski: “Though [Denzel] Washington’s first Broadway outing, as Brutus in Julius Caesar, generated tepid reviews, he has since become a heavy hitter, winning a Tony for Fences in 2010 and warm notices for A Raisin in the Sun in 2014. But some celebrities haven’t gained the same applause. Here are ten Hollywood luminaries and pop sensations who made lesser appearances on the Great White Way.”